mini life lesson

Two children doing their homework at the dining room table must be at least three feet apart at all times. This would have prevented the crayola/glue stick massacre of 2011.

Goodnight Moon

Tonight there was a super perigee moon, the first in 18 years. My kids and I have a little love affair with the moon, so after sunset we put on snowpants and coats and went out to find it. It was hidden on our street, but when we got around the corner to the top of the park, there it was, shining low over the playground equipment, bright and huge and yellow. The kids ran to the bottom of the park for a better look. Ben said that it looked like a big bubble, or a balloon. Naomi said it looked like a circle. My camera battery died after a couple of pics (dang, should have checked it this afternoon), but we were entranced.
I sat down on a bench and let the kids play for a while in the darkness, hiding in the shadows, sneaking up the slides and racing down them. I listened to their whoops and whisperings as the moon lit the cratered landscape of countless footprints on the soft snow of the afternoon, now lightly frozen in the night. So much beauty and happiness, and under it a gnawing sadness because I would have loved nothing better than to be watching it on that bench with another, someone who looked up into the sky tonight and whose first thought was to tell me about it, wishing that he was there to kiss me under that wonderful moon.
We walked up to the top of the park again and said bye to the moon. I looked at the kids yelling, "Goodnight Moon!" and I remembered that the next time a moon like this comes again they will be grown.
Then we had a really good howl and walked home. Goodnight moon, I love you.

How do I explain to my screaming daughter that she has to wear tights when I myself hate them with a fiery passion?

Don't know where she gets it

Getting ready for work/daycare/school earlier this week. Kids are dressed and playing in the living room, Steve is cleaning off cars, I am sitting at the table eating cereal. I hear a child come running down the hallway. It's Naomi, starkers except for a fake pearl necklace. She walks in casually, does a small turn, gives me a smile and runs down the hallway again. We have so much to look forward to........

Adventures in momming

There's nothing like walking into the bathroom, stepping into a puddle of urine, and having no idea which child it came from.......

number one or number two?

One of the things that they never tell you about being a parent is the quantity of bodily fluids you will have to deal with on a daily basis. When you are pregnant, you pee 25 times a day for 9 months, and I think this is to prepare you for the quantity of urine you will be exposed to over the first year alone after your first child is born. For the first few years, you cannot escape from it. You talk about poop, you examine diapers, you grab your children off the ground and smell their butts, you even stick your hands down their pants and grab their crotches, only to sigh and reach for yet another diaper and the box of wipes. Everybody poops, we all know this and yet it becomes this obsession that honestly? No non-parent would ever have guessed would become so all-encompassing. Then your second child comes and at some point you realise that you have not had a day without dealing with someone else's feces for years. Case in point: tonight when my son managed to poop in the toilet, across the seat, and on the floor while in search of another roll of toilet paper, and my daughter peed all over the kitchen floor. Every surface is fair game. My husband deals with more than his fair share and yet I still feel as though I am drowning in human waste. I have a dream, a dream that one day I will only have to look after my own functions. Of course, by then I may be using Depends.....